Welcome to the third edition of Shrimpy’s brand new newsletter, a place for staying up to date on the latest trends, news, and events in the cryptocurrency industry.

Digital assets evolve and move faster compared to any other market. For those who do not have time to constantly scroll Crypto Twitter, we wrote a special weekly update that covers everything major that happened this week.

Editor’s note: Exactly one year has passed since the deadly crypto and stock market slump that led to Bitcoin’s ~$3k flash crash. A lot has changed in only 365 days. DeFi became a thing, NFTs are now selling for millions of dollars, and 99% of cryptocurrencies have reached new ATHs. If someone told us in 2020 that this would happen, we would surely throw him in the loony bin.

How radically did your life change and which steps did you take to stay persistently bullish? Let us know in the comments below!

Summary

Binance is reportedly under an investigation by the CFTC for illegally serving U.S. customers.
JPMorgan launched a debt instrument that exposes investors to 11 crypto-related companies.
Several major Crypto Twitter accounts were suspended due to spam reports.
Members of the U.S. Congress began introduced a new crypto legislation.
Coinbase valuation on Nasdaq reached $90B following a private auction.
Ripple and MoneyGram decided to temporarily split ways.
A malicious entity spammed the Nano blockchain network with transactions.
Beeple sold an NFT for $69.3 million

CFTC to probe Binance over illegal trading activity

In an article published by Bloomberg on Friday, it was revealed that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) plans to launch a probe against Binance to determine whether the exchange allowed U.S. customers to illegally trade.

The report notes that Binance is so far not accused of any wrongdoing, according to an anonymous source that claims that the investigation is confidential.

CEO Changepeng Zhao quickly responded to the news, claiming that the probe is a FUD. In some of his statements, Zhao explained that the exchange uses ‘advanced tech to detect trades from the U.S.’

JPMorgan launches cryptocurrency exposure basket

JPMorgan announced this week that it would launch a cryptocurrency exposure basket in the form of a debt instrument for investors who are bullish on the rising digital asset sector.

The instrument does not directly provide exposure to crypto-assets. Instead, investors will have the option to invest in a basket of businesses that are directly or indirectly related to cryptocurrencies. The list contains 11 companies in total, including MicroStrategy, Square, Riot Blockchain, and Nvidia.

Famous Crypto Twitter accounts get suspended

On Wednesday, several crypto-related Twitter accounts with a large following were suspended for unknown reasons. Popular users such as The Crypto Dog, KoroushAK, and 100trillionUSD have temporarily lost access to their accounts.

Most accounts have lost their suspensions within the same day after Twitter revealed that the accounts were closed by mistake as a result of massive spam reports.

U.S. Congress progresses with new crypto regulations

U.S. lawmakers have introduced a new legislation on Tuesday in an effort to bring legal clarity to the domestic crypto market. The legislation was followed with the creation of a workgroup composed of experts from the SEC and CFTC, who will evaluate the legal framework surrounding digital assets in the U.S.

Called the “Eliminate Barriers to Innovation Act of 2021,’ the legislation’s goal is to determine when regulatory agencies have jurisdiction over a specific cryptocurrency. For example, investors would better understand in which situations the SEC could declare an asset as a security and when the CFTC can declare a digital asset as a commodity.

Coinbase reaches $90B valuation

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has reached a $90 billion valuation in the wake of its future public listing on the Nasdaq. During a private market auction, the company’s shares exchanged hands at a price of $350.

In the meantime, Binance revealed that it does not plan to become a publicly-traded company, while Kraken’s CEO claimed that his company should be valued at $10 billion.

Ripple and MoneyGram end their partnership

In a blog post published by Brad Garlinghouse, it was revealed that Ripple and MoneyGram decided to end their partnership, which was previously put on hold a month earlier.

The original agreement was that Ripple would pay MoneyGram to use its XRP token for international settlement. As a result of regulatory pressure by the SEC, Ripple most likely decided to temporarily pause its market development investments.

Three major DeFi events

1. Ethereum is losing ground to competing blockchains. Prominent decentralized exchanges are looking to move away from Ethereum as a result of high network congestion. Developers now focus on creating layer-two scaling solutions for networks like Binance Smart Chain and Polkadot.

SushiSwap has already made progress in this regard by deploying contracts on xDai, Moonbeam, Binance Smart Chain, Fantom, and Polygon.
Balancer and 1Inch are also heading in this direction by adding support for smart contract ecosystems like Binance Smart Chain, MoonBeam, and PolkaDot.

2. Alameda Research invests $20 million in Reef Finance. Alameda purchased $20 million worth of REEF tokens from the Polkadot-based DeFi project. The investment’s goal is to help the developer team build a cross-chain integration with Serum and Raydium on Solana.

Alameda Research recently invested in Oyxen Protocol and travel app Maps as well.
Reef CEO Denko Mancheski stated that they collaborate with Alameda on other strategies and technologies as well.

3. Dash launches an Ethereum DeFi bridge. After several months of development, DASH has launched a cross-chain bridge for the Ethereum network that features staking and yield farming capabilities.

Their dive into the DeFi world was made possible with the help of a partnership with gateway protocol StakeHound.
Dash investors are now able to yield farm with their assets and also participate in arbitrage and lending activities across the entire Ethereum network.

Nano blockchain network ‘goes down’ amidst transaction spam attack

The Nano blockchain network was completely wrecked this week as a transaction spam attack caused the network to be out of sync.

An anonymous malicious entity used the protocol’s extremely low fees to send worthless transactions en masse. Users reported that they were unable to send transactions and that the block explorers were out-of-sync. Node operators were forced to change their configuration in order to eliminate the bandwidth limit brought on by the attack.

The attack stopped at one point, and Nano creator Colin LeMahieu claimed that the network is slowly recovering. However, it will take time until the project becomes fully healthy again.

Beeple NFT sold for $69.3 million

The NFT craze reached new levels of euphoria as an artwork was sold for a staggering $69.3 million at an auction on Thursday.

Created by famous digital artist ‘Beeple,’ the NFT jumped from a valuation of $20 million to $50 million near the last minutes of the auction, only to be sold to an anonymous investor for the final price of $69 million.

Named ‘The First 5000 Days,’ Beeple’s NFT contains a collection of digital images created by the artist during the start of his career. For more than 13 years, Beeple produced art on a daily basis which he published for free on the internet.

Quote of the week

The Good News

Tether expanded its operations to yet another new blockchain network, adding the USDT token to the Solana blockchain network. By joining the latest dApp ecosystem, Tether will support a dazzling array of projects.
The New York State Department of Financial Services awarded the BitLicense to Bakkt, a crypto-oriented subsidiary of the Intercontinental Exchange.
Binance hired a former U.S. senator and ambassador to China as their new government relations adviser. Maxwell Baucus will most likely help the exchange with surviving an incoming regulatory onslaught.

The Bad News

Grayscale temporarily halted new inflows to the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) without disclosing the reason for doing so. As a reminder, GBTC and GETH shares have traded below the prices of Bitcoin and Ethereum for several weeks.
Hackers stole $3.8 million from DODO, a decentralized exchange based running on the Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain blockchain networks. The DODO team shared that they have returned $1.88 million from the flash loan exploit.
Chinese social media platform Weibo decided to suspend the official accounts of four leading crypto exchanges: Huobi, OKEx, Binance, and MXC. The event occurred shortly after Bitcoin became the 10th-most popular topic on Weibo.

Crypto Twitter Highlights

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